


I'll stay with you

by Tiria_the_Normal_Psychopath



Category: Bleach
Genre: Also fluff, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drabble, Familiars, Gen, Ichigo is too serious, Kurosaki Masaki (mention), Mention of fighting, Pre-Canon, Tatsuki's there to tease him, kitsunegeddon, that might be the reason, those two work together like a charm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:09:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiria_the_Normal_Psychopath/pseuds/Tiria_the_Normal_Psychopath
Summary: He found her when he was looking for something he lost. She followed him because she lost something too.(She has four legs, brown-red fur and a fluffy tail, but that won't stop her.)





	I'll stay with you

When Ichigo was little, before his life turned on its head and he learned what it means for the tears to go dry, he loved stories about foxes. His mom would read him stories about kitsune before he went to sleep. His dad would shower him with random fox facts and Ichigo would absorb them all like a sponge. When there was a documentary about them in the TV, he'd run to it and watch with stars in his eyes.

 

At first, he loved foxes because they had the same colour of fur as he did of hair. Later, he'd learn that foxes were fighters even though they could be snuggly and gentle and he learned to love them more.

 

When his mother died, he would go visit the river where it happened and hoped she would appear like the last days were a nightmare coloured vivid red in the dark grey. One day he stumbled too far, into an area that left the river untouched by human hand. The edge of forest lurked over the river, ominous in the lengthening shadows.

 

Under the tree, drinking from the river, a beautiful fox with brown-red fur and fluffy tail stood. Ichigo watched and thought and mourned and _wanted_. As if the fox heard his soul cry for help, it lifted its head and locked its eyes on his. Slowly, carefully, it came to him, steps silent on the forest floor. It was smaller than Ichigo first thought. He suddenly remembered how he drew his first picture of a fox, orange like him, with his mother sitting next to him. Then he saw only blurs of colours instead of the clear frames and he was crying for the first time since he woke up with his sisters curled around him and their house empty of the sun that used to shine within.

 

When a gentle wet touch nudged his hand, he hiccupped as he startled, blinking away the tears. The fox watched him still, and then brushed its head against his hand. He could feel soft fur under his fingertips and shyly, he moved to stroke it. The fox stood patient, even leaned into him and before long, Ichigo was sitting on the ground, hands clutched around the fox curled around him and cried. When the sun drew purple curtain over the world, he went back home, hand still in the fox's fur as it accompanied him on its way. After that, the fox just never left.

 

The first week after this chance encounter, Ichigo goes back to school. His classmates quiet down around him and Tatsuki tries to talk with him every time the recess comes about. He ignores both. In the classes, his mind is blank but sometimes, a thought worms its way through the numb space - the bullying was bad and he cried; this is worse and the tears don't come.

 

The fox isn't with him all the time. He sees it in the morning when he goes to school, once or twice. Saw it in the evening when he was doing his homework too. Most often, he sees it on the bank of the river he keeps walking towards. He doesn't follow the river's course anymore. Instead he sits near the fox, but not next to it, and spends his time watching the flow of the river, his head blissfully silent. He doesn't stay more than an hour, anymore. The fox always nudges him long enough that he gets up and turns his steps towards home. The fox shadows the steps on silent paws.

 

It goes like that for a few weeks and after everything changed, the world keeps turning and Ichigo tries not to stumble. The first reminder that the ruins of his world didn't even crack the others' comes in the form of a demand from older students to give them lunch money. Ichigo didn't understand at first. He doesn't get lunch money, he gets lunch. He takes it every morning from the table where his mo- And suddenly, he remembers that that is no longer true. Now his dad gives him some money to buy lunch because when he tried to cook lunch the first time after giving him the leftovers from various foods they had, the pan had to go to trash along with the food still on it.

 

"You'll have to learn how to spend and save money sooner than I thought!" his father said, his booming voice echoing in the empty kitchen space. Ichigo took the money quietly, received the hand on his head diligently and proceeded to ask his dad details about the money he gave him. His dad, voice softer now, answered his questions and added that this was for the lunch for three days. Ichigo should try to get a healthy lunch each day and not lack any money. "But," he continued, "since you're only learning, if you happen to miscount, you will ask me for more if you need it, okay?"

 

Ichigo nodded, already setting his mind - he'll do his best and he won't have to ask. 

 

So there he was now, standing in front of the boys the second day in. They smirked at him, posturing with bodies too small and threatening with voices too thin.

 

"No," was what they got for their trouble.

 

They didn't like that.

 

But Ichigo was tired of crying.

 

His eyes were dry, he couldn't hide behind his mother anymore and he had responsibilities to uphold, however small the correct spending of a few bills could be. So when one of the older boys took him by the collar, he took him by his hand and twisted in a move he learned at the dojo. The other boy shrieked in pain and his friends stepped in to, probably, make Ichigo stand down.

 

There were some fists flying although mostly there were hands shoving. After the skirmish, the boys ran away and Ichigo stood, a little worse for wear but grimly satisfied and with his lunch money untouched.

 

That was the first time the fox left the riverside on its own and came looking for him. When it came close, it yipped quietly and brushed his head against his bruised knuckles. It stung a bit and Ichigo hissed quietly. The fox yipped again, this time louder and with a little nudging, the fiery duo moved towards home.

 

This time, the fox didn't disappear as soon as Ichigo neared the front door. Instead, it followed him, invited itself inside, and Ichigo didn't try to protest.

 

* * *

 

 

He got himself a familiar, is what dad had said, laughing.

 

When Ichigo came home, he didn't know how to explain the furry companion, so he told him the story about his lunch money. His father listened; quiet for once, while cleaning the scraped knuckles. When he finished and put away his things, he put his arm on Ichigo's shoulders and pushed him against his side in a one-armed hug.

 

"You stood up for yourself and you succeeded! You should be proud of yourself!"

 

Ichigo scowled and tried to push the once again overbearing man away from him. His dad went easily enough. He couldn't help but moan aloud about the cruelty of his children to his late wife, however. When he looked back to his son and the fox sitting next to him, Ichigo saw his eyes sharpen in a way that made him nervous, as if he were waiting for the results of a test he didn't know was one.

 

Then his father's expression cleared and Ichigo thought that the weirdness ended there. Instead, he got a grown man kneeling in front of a fox, asking it if it wanted to have a dinner with them.

 

"We have some pasta I didn't manage to burn!"

 

Ichigo, overtaken by his survival instincts against idiocy, whacked his father on the shoulder. The man laughed as he stood up, mussing Ichigo's hair as he walked to the kitchen.

 

And Ichigo, grumbling all the way, followed him. When he thought he couldn't be heard, he whispered to the fox, "There's still some meat from yesterday."

 

Feeling silly for talking to the animal after whacking his father for doing the same thing, he scowled in thought. Then the happy yip coming from behind him managed to replace the scowl with a small smile and he sat at the kitchen table, listening as Yuzu asked when she could learn to cook herself.

 

* * *

 

 

His sisters adored the fox.

 

What was surprising was that the fox liked them back just as much if not more.

 

Snuggling on couch became a thing. Karin and the fox practicing with the ball were to be seen in the afternoons. Yuzu brushed the fox's fur every other day. Surely and astonishingly quickly, the fox became a part of the family. The girls loved it, his dad cared for it and Ichigo... Ichigo bonded with it on a level he wasn't sure was normal. Normal or not though, the fox was his and for the better or worse, he was the fox's.

 

Familiar, his father named it. Companion, Ichigo called it. And as a Protector, the fox acted.

 

* * *

 

 

"What's its name?"

 

He looked up from the book he was reading for Japanese literature class to see Tatsuki nearing him with a lunchbox in hand.

 

"It's a she." Wait, what?

 

Tatsuki raised an eyebrow on him, succinctly summing up what he felt, "Oh really? What's her name, then?"

 

Ichigo's mind was still stuck on the fact that he apparently knew a gender of his three-months-old companion without ever being interested by it or even having a way of finding out. He looked down at her as she followed a fly with her eyes. She was nestled next to him - she couldn't come with him into the school building and wanted to be close when she could. He couldn't say he minded. She was a calming presence he desperately needed whenever someone was stupid enough to try to pick a fight with him and he needed to not bash their heads in. At school grounds, that is.

 

He realized Tatsuki was still next to him, one hand on her hip, the other waving the lunchbox in front of him to get his attention. He needed to backtrack to remember what they were talking about.

 

"She doesn't have a name."

 

Although she should. Why had he never given her a name?

 

Tatsuki was thinking along the same lines. She fell to sit next to him against the railing, opening her lunchbox with a disbelieving frown drooping her lips.

 

"You've had her following you how many weeks now? You even adopted her into your home, right? You've got to name her something!"

 

He watched as she moved her chopsticks in the air, wondering wryly if he should tell her that she was supposed to eat her food with them, not train for stabbing people in the jugular. Or in the eye, he corrected himself when he had to move his head from a hand gesture too close for comfort.

 

"It just... never came up. It was always 'the fox'. We didn't need to call her anything else."

 

"Well, if you're going to insist that it's _her_ , you should maybe think of a name to make the point across," she smiled smugly as Ichigo glowered at her.

 

He looked back to the she-fox and found her looking back at him, her eyes bearing a curious glint in them. He wondered at that, sometimes. It would happen that the brown eyes would betray an understanding more alike to a man's than to one of an animal. She would survey the situation and twitch her ear when they talked about her. It was even stranger since she wasn't given a name yet.

 

Which begged the question - what name should he give her?

 

"I don't really know how to name people."

 

"Well, she's not a person so you might have it a little bit easier."

 

"She might as well be."

 

He felt Tatsuki twitch in surprise, but he didn't pay it any attention. He moved his attention away from the fox to his lap where he put his book to rest. Then an idea came to him. He turned his eyes towards the sky, where the sun shone through the clouds. He used to read about foxes before. Scientific facts and myths both. She wasn't a trickster, that, she was not. First and foremost, she was gentle. Surprisingly so. But he could feel some mischief in her. Especially, strangely enough, when his father was around. She liked to mess with him a lot. There was a lot of "Oh Masaki, my children are so cruel!" as a consequence. He and Karin began betting chores on the number of times he says it in a day.

 

She was gentle, kind and... warm.

 

"Yoake."

 

"Hm?" Tatsuki raised her eyes from the empty bento box to give him a confused look.

 

"Her name is Yoake."

 

* * *

 

After Tatsuki sufficiently embarrassed him by calling him poetic, he went to the rest of his classes and walked with Yoake home.

 

The statement that he named their furry pet immediately launched another discussion about it. At least this time, they weren't calling him poetic. Out loud.

 

"I like the name!" Yuzu enthusiastically said and Ichigo couldn't help but smile as he saw his sisters huddled around Yoake to snuggle with her. They missed each other, those three.

 

"It fits her really well," Karin agreed with a small smile etched to her face. Ichigo was glad that there was warmth in his sisters' eyes again. He was worried that he might not see it again, after mom passed away.

 

He startled when he realised the direction of his thoughts. This was... the first time he actually thought clearly about the incident. There was still guilt eating at him and shame whenever he thought of what happened but... he didn't shy away from the fact that it happened. And maybe, just maybe, he was healing. And it wasn't such a bad thing. It couldn't be, when he looked at his sisters as they played around the room with Dawn. And if they weren't happy, for a blissful moment, at least they were living right.

 

"C'mon, let's start making dinner. The old man's gonna close the clinic in thirty minutes. He can only say how cruel we are three more times today."

  

* * *

 

 

_Life as a fox wasn't so bad_ , Masaki thought to herself as she watched Ichigo helping Yuzu cook, all the while bantering with Karin. It wasn't ideal. Sometimes it wasn't even comfortable. But it was a form the heavens gave her when she refused to give up on her soul and leave the living world. Like this, she was able to see her family. She could never bring back the times when she was able to chase their fears away with words but she was happy that at the very least, she could still offer them the loving touch and gentle warmth.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So... This is a thing. I made. And am actually posting.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, even as the confusing mess it probably is. This is my first published work though, so that is my bulletproof excuse.
> 
> While I was writing, I was thinking 'it feels incomplete'. And maybe it is. The feeling changed after. But I sure as hell don't know what will the future be. It was an experience, writing a solid, one-piece work. I hope that it was an experience for you to read it!


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